Why governors want Jimi Agbaje as PDP chairman

Following the horse trading that has characterised the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) national convention holding today in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, majority of the PDP governors have queued behind Jimi Agbaje, the party’s Lagos governorship candidate in the 2015 election, for the position of chairman.

Reliable sources said that the governors have also reached out to majority of delegates from non-PDP controlled states with a view to wooing them to vote for Agbaje.

Last minute attempts were made by some party elders outside the South West geopolitical zone to find a common ground among the contending aspirants but it was futile as none of the aspirants agreed to step down for another.

In the course of achieving this, sources said huge sums of money have been given out to the leaders of each delegation from the states that began arriving Port Harcourt on Monday on the pretext of assisting in offsetting part of their bills.

Ironically, Governor Nyesom Wike, who is the chairman of the convention planning committee, was pointed out as the actual arrow head of the plot to make Agbaje the chairman of the party.

According to dependable sources, the governors settled for Agbaje because they see him as more comfortable to relate with than Chief Bode George who some say is old enough to father some of them. The Governors, many of who ran for office at the same time Agbaje contested his failed bid for Governor of Lagos State, desire an amiable Chairman. They, however, look forward to their continuing influence on the Chairman’s office by backing Uche Secondus, a more experienced and older party member, as Deputy Chairman.

The governors mostly from the South South and the South East are also said to believe that while the crisis lasted, Agbaje remained aloof and did not align with any of the groups.

Chief George, however, we gather is receiving massive support from the elders of the party, most especially members of the Board of Trustees and the National Executive Committee (NEC) who are seriously campaigning for him based on his antecedents as loyal and unflinching party member.

The support base of George, it was learnt, is campaigning vigorously that Agbaje who has crisscrossed three different political parties, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), should not be trusted absolutely because of his fluid political life.

However, it is not certain where the vote of the northern delegates will go as it was not known if the plea by the governors seeking support for Agbaje was acceptable to them.

A group of northern elders under the aegis of PDP Northern Leaders Forum had last Friday at its 5th meeting held in Abuja put together a special screening committee to look into the credentials of all the aspirants and advised the north on who to support at the polls for each offices.

Specifically, the committee was mandated to look at aspirants who can be trusted to protect the interest of the north within the structure of the party. Though, the content of the report of the screening committee headed by Senator Ibrahim Mantu said to have been submitted to the Forum headed by Prof Jerry Gana was not immediately known.

Some of the northern delegates were said to have expressed reservations about the candidature of Agbaje, who they said openly campaigned against the attempt by the north to take over the presidency from Goodluck Jonathan at the last general election.

Agbaje was said to have openly threatened that the Niger Delta militants will make Nigeria ungovernable should Goodluck Jonathan lose the election and a northerner is voted into office.

It would be recalled that the PDP did not allow any northern candidate contest against Jonathan even when the zoning formula was supposed to be in favour of the region.It was also gathered that Chief Raymond Dokpesi and Chief Bode George have closed ranks as the poll draw nearer.

On Monday night, both aspirants attended the meeting called by the convention planning committee together in Chief George’s car but the meeting was postponed due to poor attendance by aspirants contesting for all the offices.

On Tuesday, both of them also rode in Chief George’s car again to the meeting which was held at the Rivers State Government House.

No one could, however, say authoritatively if any discussion was held about anyone stepping down for another.

However, while all other internal politics were playing out in Port-Harcourt in preparation for the convention, embattled former national chairman of the party, ?Ali Modu-Sheriff, was in Abuja deriding the convention and the role played by the judiciary in emboldening the caretaker committee to go ahead with the convention.

In an emergency press conference in Abuja?, Sheriff said he was shocked by the order issued by the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt in which Justice Watila Mohammed validated today’s convention on the ground that the July 4, 2016 which upheld the decision taken at the May 21, 2016 convention is still subsisting.

He derided all judges who had issued one judgment or a bench order in favour of Makarfi group, vowing to send a petition to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mahmoud Mohammed and the National Judicial Council (NJC)? against some judges of the Federal High Court who he alleged had demonstrated unethical behaviour.

He said those judges ought to be immediately removed to restore sanity to Nigeria’s judiciary.?

?He specifically expressed his frustration and disappointment on the ruling of the Port Harcourt Division of the Federal High Court.

“?We are shocked even with that ruling. All the judges in Nigeria are on annual vacation. We have been in court with all of them for the past one month on an issue that a judge went into in Port Harcourt which started on Friday. People went and filed court cases on Thursday and got an ex parte motion, which has been frowned at by the judiciary for now. Most stakeholders in the judiciary don’t want ex parte motion because it denies justice to others.

“But let’s accept that the judge decided to do that. The life span of the ex parte motion is 14 days, which means you have time to serve the other people to respond. On that Thursday, the judge gave ex parte motion. The next day he converted that ex parte motion to interlocutory order. On Monday, he sat and heard the main case to give a ruling or judgment today at 2p.m without allowing us as defendants to defend ourselves.

“This morning (Tuesday), when our lawyers went to court, the judge authorised all the registry staff to run away. It took our lawyer, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) to call everybody in Nigeria that this judiciary should not be destroyed. From 9a.m till now, they are receiving our own response to the application. The truth about it is that the whole thing is a hoax”.

Calling on the CJN to sanitise the judiciary, Modu-Sheriff, who looked terribly enraged, said “these need urgent attention. We are calling on the chief judge of the nation to look into Port Harcourt Division of this judiciary. Otherwise, they will bring anarchy into this country.”

Justifying President Muhammadu Buhari’s call for a more disciplined judiciary, the former PDP boss said: “I think all of us listened to the president of the nation complaining about judiciary. Our judges in the Supreme Court are first class; our judges at Court of Appeal are second to none. All the problems of Nigeria are few judges in the Federal High Courts. Urgent attention needed to be taken by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Chief Judge of the Federal High Court and the Judicial Service Commission. Unless those kinds of people are removed completely, Nigeria will have problem.”